Alice Out Of Phase Space
by Old Toad
Summary: Alice attends a strange lecture and enters Red Dwarf. Only a 'mechanical goose' knows the way back.


Alice's sister quite insisted that they go. She pointed out that this was an opportunity that they would not get again; Open Days were rare and they were not often in town with nothing to do. Besides, it was going to rain; it had gone very dark and they had already heard thunder. So in they went. Too many people had had the same idea and there was a considerable crush. Somehow they became separated, which suited Alice very nicely as she was finding her big sister rather overbearing that afternoon. However, Alice did not like being in such a crowd, and looked for a quieter place in the rambling old building. Soon she found herself almost alone in a dark-panelled corridor. By an open door was a neat hand-written notice which said "An Introduction to Phase Space."

Now Alice did not know who Phase Space might be; she guessed he was a continental gentleman. She imagined a tall, fair-haired young Norwegian with a far-away look in his eyes, who would bow slightly, and shake her hand, saying "Good afternoon young lady" in a funny accent. She went in and found herself in a dim and dusty room with ranks of seats like a tiny theatre. "It's a lecture theatre," she thought (and was right for once.) She found an inconspicuous seat in an empty row – of which there were many - close to the exit. After a few minutes two men entered at the front of the lecture theatre. One cleared his throat and announced

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Professor of Mathematics!"

The professor bowed to the other, who went and sat down. A few people clapped politely. The professor then went to the blackboard and began writing and mumbling. "Is this man Phase Space?" thought Alice, "Because if so that wasn't much of an introduction."

Alice had never seen a real mathematician before, and was content to observe him for some time without listening to what he was saying. Alice knew from her brother that mathematicians did more than add numbers together; for example they spent a lot of time giving names to triangles. Alice had thought this a very strange pastime until now, but watching this strange little man covering the blackboard with lines and circles and strange writing she could well imagine him doing just that. He would tap a triangle, listen to it ring and tinkle and announce to himself: "What a dull sound, I will call this triangle Mabel."

Alice jerked upright in her seat at this thought and silently scolded herself for such a silly daydream. She knew very well, because her brother had explained it, that mathematicians were interested in _drawings_ of triangles, not the real triangles that you find in an orchestra.

Alice tried listening to the speaker. She noticed that some words occurred again and again. One was "mechanics." Alice understood this: mechanics were men who looked after machinery such as railway engines, which they oiled and then wiped clean again with rags. She heard "p's and q's" repeated frequently. Her governess was always telling her to "mind your p's and q's." Was this little man lecturing on the politeness of workmen? She thought it unlikely. While most of the talk sounded to her like gibberish, she caught other words like 'time', 'space' and 'velocipede.' (She was fairly sure it was 'velocipede', which she knew to be an old word for a bicycle.) It seemed that "Phase Space" was not a person, but a place. "Not a real place either", she thought, "but an imaginary one." (Which was not too far from the truth.) It was evidently a big enough place that it took time to move around it, even on a bicycle. She could not imagine how one could be introduced even to a _real_ place, let alone an _imaginary_ one.

She decided that the professor was going to be talking for a long time yet (which was almost certainly true), and that she was not going to get anything more from him but severe boredom (which was also almost certainly true.) Very quietly she stood up and tip-toed from the room.

Back in the corridor, which was as dim as before, she noticed for the first time that the walls were not wood-panelled as she had thought, but some dull metal, as was the floor, which clanked under her step. The corridor was now deserted, but a slight whirring noise from one end attracted her attention. There, close to the floor, was a little red light and it was moving away from her. She followed it as quickly as she could walk – for one must never run in a corridor - through turns and twists, slowly catching up on a low, moving box with a sort of metal arm sticking up out of it. It turned into a doorway without a door, and when she reached it she saw a bold, printed sign which said "Training Room."

"Perhaps it is something to do with railways" she thought (quite mistakenly) and went in. There were a few tables with chairs, and the only ornament in a bleak, grey room was a picture on the wall. It showed the head and shoulders of a lady with nearly white shoulder-length hair and bright red lips who appeared to be staring at her. Alice knew it was a good painting because as she wandered around the room its eyes seemed to follow her. There was no sign of the moving box and so she went back to the door. A woman's voice behind her called out "Don't go!"

She spun around, but nobody was there, and there was no place a person could hide.

"On the screen, the SCREEN" repeated the voice. Alice was puzzled, for there was no screen to hide behind. And why should somebody both hide and shout to get her attention?

"Here, here, HERE!" the voice called. It appeared to be coming from the picture on the wall. Only then did Alice notice that the picture was moving: it was not a picture at all but must be a window with the pale-haired lady on the other side. Alice sat down facing the lady in the window and stared back at her.

"Why don't you come in?" she asked.

The lady ignored the question. "Who are you and how did you get here?" she asked.

Alice did not think this very polite, but she was supposed to be on her best behaviour. "I am Alice" she said, "and I walked here. Please miss, how should I address you?"

"Holly."

"I'm sorry?"

"Call me Holly; that is my name. Just Holly."

"Good afternoon Holly, how do you do?"

"Well Alice, I'm puzzled. This is not an easy place to get to. Did you come by ship?"

"No miss, I just walked along the corridor. I followed a sort of moving box which came in here."

"And are you alone dear?"

"Well I came with my sister, but I gave her the slip in the crowd."

"Crowd? Where was this?"

"Back in the entrance hall; we came for the Open Day. If this not part of Open Day, then I'm sorry. Could you show me the way back please?"

Holly seemed to be thinking this over, and was still doing so when Alice heard footsteps approaching. Alice did not know what to expect, so a bald man in armour did not surprise her. (It was not really armour and he was not really a man, but Alice could be forgiven for that mistake.)

"Good afternoon miss, and welcome to Red Dwarf. Can I get you something?" He paused for thought. "An ice-cream perhaps; I should be able to rustle up something?"

"Thank you," said Alice, "but one should not accept gifts from strangers."

"Quite right miss," said the man in armour, "but you are our guest – at least I think you are – and it is only right that we offer you hospitality."

"All right Kryten, I'll take it from here." The speaker had arrived silently. He was dressed in a smart uniform and clearly was used to taking command.

"At last," thought Alice, "somebody sensible." (She was getting a good many things wrong this afternoon.)

"Now little girl," said the man in uniform, who stood with hands on hips glowering at her, "you are not in any trouble, and we are all your friends here, but we need the answers to some questions."

He was trying to charm and intimidate at the same time. He had a glittery capital H in the middle of his forehead. Alice wondered whether he ever looked at himself in the mirror. She tried to stifle a giggle. They were both distracted by a noise from across the room as a metal panel slide aside ("a sliding door" thought Alice, "how clever.") and a third man came into the room. He was as scruffy and ill-dressed as the man in uniform was neat. "He must be a mechanic," Alice thought (which was true.) He smiled at Alice and waved a hand at her before sitting down. "He is like an overgrown child," thought Alice (no comment). His voice was grown-up enough though:

"Holly, what is goin' on?"

"Dave, this is Alice. She doesn't seem to know how she got here, and nor do I."

"Hello Alice" said the man called Dave, raising his cap to her, but remaining seated. He spoke to Holly again.

"Holly, is she real; could she be a hologram like Rimmer?"

Kryten, the bald-man-in-armour answered. "I have taken the liberty of running a scan on her, Mr Lister sir. She is real and she is as human as you are. Possibly more so."

Mr Lister ignored that last remark. "Well that blows a few theories. Holly, do your scans show anything?"

"Nothing Dave. However she got here it wasn't by space ship of any kind. She just sort of _came_ here."

The man in uniform decided he had been ignored long enough. "You know that the whole universe is just a moving point in phase space; and that alternative universes are just other moving points in the same phase space. Well suppose …"

His voice trailed off, and the others all began talking at once. Very soon there was a four-sided argument going on about Alice, but ignoring her. They could not understand how she came to be there, but found her arrival both threatening and exciting. The three men gathered together in front of Holly, still in her window, and their backs were turned to Alice. She decided that none of them was going to help her: she would have to try and find her own way back. Unobserved, she left the room by the doorway she had come in, and the last she heard was: "She says she followed a skutter here, maybe the skutters know where she came aboard."

Outside, to her surprise and delight, was the "box" she had followed earlier. What she had thought to be like a hand on an arm was much more like a small head on a long thin neck. "Why," she thought, "you are a mechanical goose, how quaint." She bent down and spoke to the skutter. "Please, will you take me back to where I came in?"

The skutter dipped its head in silent agreement, turned awkwardly, and trundled up the corridor with Alice following. In the Training Room the argument continued, but Alice could no longer make out the words. The way back had many twists and turns along deserted criss-crossing corridors, but quite soon they came to a pair of wooden doors. The skutter drew to one side and signalled Alice to go through. She bent down, said "thank you," and patted her mechanical goose on the head. Then she slipped between the doors and found herself back in the big entrance hall where she had escaped from her sister. Weaving her way through the thinning crowd she found her close to where they had parted.

"Alice, there you are, I was beginning think you had wandered off. Hurry up now or we'll miss the first event."

The first event was a "popular lecture-demonstration on electricity and magnetism" which Alice tolerated. The second was a talk "Why Space Travel is Impossible" by an eminent scientist, which Alice thought very silly indeed, though she said nothing. Much later, after the last event, she found herself back in the entrance hall, and was not surprised that there was no sign of those particular double doors.

And if, during a long and adventurous life, Alice ever did see a mechanical goose again, well, that is another story.


End file.
